February 2012
1 post
What did you write in the sand? Has it been washed away? Set out to a distant land, riding on a gentle wave.
December 2011
1 post
September 2011
1 post
1 tag
August 2011
1 post
“As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other’s names. Naming is a difficult and...
July 2011
1 post
1 tag
There lies a still hoop leading to a fireplace The tired dog pants
May 2011
2 posts
3 tags
1 tag
Dive into the blue
On a hill, overlooking
The pink of blossom
April 2011
3 posts
5 tags
Holden on constructing the self
“The way I see it, a lot of us (or people, because I’m not sure whether to involve myself in this) are trying to be righteous and saintly, but not without acknowledging some truth about being quite a bunch of nasty people with some kind of nasty, sorry past. Now, my key word here is “some”, because not everything is acknowledged. We (again, I use this pronoun loosely) can...
4 tags
Holden on a human heart
“I could make it seem like there is only one person on my mind and the same person in my heart. Or I might not, and I will suffer the consequences of watching everyone leave me, leave the rooms that I have created for them in my heart. Everyone gets a chamber, or an artery or vein. They complete me. And they can ruin me. I can watch them leave and I can watch my heart empty itself until...
1 tag
If you have ever been hurt, don’t be afraid to love again. Love only heals, it never hurts. When you find yourself broken after giving your love to someone, it is the person who hurts you, not the love you have for them. Even if you fall back in love with someone who has hurt you, love only unconditionally.
February 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Reintroducing Holden
He has never had a problem finding his place in this world, but who he was wherever he went is starting to spiral out of control. A spiral that starts out wide, and then narrower and narrower.
And narrower. Until he falls out of that spiral and into a space where every experience is defined by first person singulars, third person singulars and third person plurals. In this space his eyes are...
Anonymous asked: Why is the bird standing on the lamp post?
The Best Friend
He doesn’t have the face of a president on him, or a structure to hold windows and doors. He isn’t the fastest racer, nor the sturdiest on a rough road. He is far from being dressed in draped cloth, a bowl in one hand and beads in another. He is of a minority race where I come from, born into a religion that holds festivals frowned upon for a lack of noise and crowd control. He is insecure and...
January 2011
4 posts
The Practiced Lover
She asked me out on dates and requested to speak with me, not out of love but out of curiosity. Every time she touched me, I felt the imprints of a practiced lover etched into my skin, through my flesh and right down to my bone. I was standing stripped before her, but she was fully clothed. With each layer I tried to peel off her, there was too much more to unveil. So I stopped, not out of...
The Stereotype
He fit the stereotype perfectly, but he was missing a toe. I was torn between identifying him as what I would have, and what I should have; without a missing toe, or without a toe.
4 tags
3 tags
Holden on freedom
“There’ll always be the ones who worship their Gods wholeheartedly and the ones who are adamant in their patriotism towards their seemingly oppressed nations. But to say that they are caged inside a set of prescribed doctrines is to not understand what being caged is. To these people, being caged is when they are no longer allowed to be in prayer or to sing high praises of their...
November 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Holden on moving on
“I think most of us would know that it’s never a sole decision to move on without a lot of struggling to forget or the “Have I really loved you?” type of questions. We know this because whenever we find a need to move on, it usually involves someone we’ve loved deeply and thoroughly. For myself, I’ve known people whom I’ve gotten my heart involved with and...
4 tags
Holden on assumptions
“Last week, I walked into a bookstore and asked for something to read during a sunny day because I hate being under that ball of fire. The store man then proceeded to casually assume I was one prone to hatred and suggested I try having some tea instead. So I went to the tea store next door, and I asked for something that could cure me of my hatred but will leave my tongue feeling bittersweet...
3 tags
Holden on home
“The heart is where our home is. It’s like an apartment where there is a private room exclusively for ourselves (although sometimes we choose to share this room); a kitchen where we settle the dirty laundry and where we mix up the ingredients of experiences to cook up a meal that might or might not taste so good; and a living room where we spend time with our friends, lovers and...
3 tags
Nothing
It can pull you out of the wreckage caused by a needing heart that has guided you into an abyss too dark for the light in your eyes to shine through It can whisper soft but sweet words into your ear, held in on the other side by the pulling force of your frontal lobe It can save you from the crashing, tidal wave of tears that will leave a taste on your lips even when it has dried It can sew your...
1 tag
Skin like milk with ice
It moves when you are at rest
Pulse in a rhythm
1 tag
In the midst of crises, we all want to know there is still love. That even when we’re hanging by the edge of a cliff, about to free fall for a good five minutes and have our blood and bits of our body parts splattered across a five meter radius (alas, what a masterpiece it must seem, and a good headliner too: “Cliffhanger no more”), there is still someone in our lives whom we...
October 2010
5 posts
3 tags
Holden on compassion
“We are only as far as our conscience will go. What do we make of a homeless man? Another vagabond deserving of his fate or a man with the will to live despite his circumstances? A man whom we walk over to share a conversation with so that we may understand the stories bottled in him like a lion too wild for its cage.
What do we make of a hungry cat? Another dirty stray or a victim of...
3 tags
Holden on secrets
“It’s like the childhood toy you wanted to preserve in hopes you will find it ten years down the road and when you do find it, you’ll realise that the toy you had hoped would remain as a fragment of your childhood is sitting awkwardly in the present and has become too tangible to fit back into the past. Or it’s like the new toy that you’ve recently acquired and that...
3 tags
Holden on grief
“Those times when you are crying yourself to sleep night after night as though it will only get worse, and you wake up with swollen eyes, your body sunken with the weight of the world keeping you from surfacing, telling you it would have been better if you never woke up at all. Then the few nights afterwards when you realise that this too shall pass, and you sleep with hope and wake up with...
3 tags
Holden on bullying
“Sometimes I’m just a scared child, not because I’ve been bullied but because I’ve bullied. Sometimes I apologised, but sometimes I was merciless. But eventually, it stopped. I stopped. Not because I caused her to die but because on the last day I saw her, I turned to her and told her I was sorry and wished her a good life. I know, even now, that it was not enough to make...
3 tags
Holden on death
“It is in death that we begin to become more human, isn’t it? In death that we are directly faced with our mortality. Or someone else’s mortality. In death that we see and feel the tears trickling down cheeks, tasting salt on our tongues, only ever wiping them away when they’ve drenched our necks. In death that we feel a human loss, not of a phone or a wallet, but of a...
September 2010
9 posts
3 tags
Holden on nature
“I’ve never been given flowers, but I know that when I see them, they are always in some state of withering. And then it breaks my heart to know that something beautiful is about to lose its life and everything that gave it vibrancy. But of course, the human experience is very much like that. It’s ever changing but it never loses its essence. All the love that we remember, we...
2 tags
It didn’t matter that I was walking up the escalator at the rapid speed it was escalating It didn’t matter that I could fall and puncture my skull All my once innocent dreams exposed Like a scandal that I was running away from Faster than fast
3 tags
Holden on art
“I’ve never questioned what it is or what it should be because I never believe the hype and I never believe that it’s governed by any constitutions other than our human selves.”
2 tags
Holden on human rights
“Has it been over discussed? Well, has love ever been overused? I guess we might have become quite used to it being talked about and as we grow out of our once favoured childhood toys, we become tired of having the same issue floating around and sometimes shoved in our faces.
But then again, just as we know that there’s a difference between love and lust, we should also understand the...
4 tags
Holden on theology
“I’ve recently heard it’s absolutely unnecessary. Of course, this sounded very blasphemous and dismissive to me, but then I remembered when I loved someone and someone loved me, we didn’t study psychology. Or lovelogy, if that even exists. All we knew was our love for each other and that the respect between us was both mutual and natural. I know there are many questions...
2 tags
Holden on consequences
“When I was about 7, I had a picture book about a crow and a pitcher that I would read everyday and each time I reread it, I saw a different story unfold. Like the time after Thomas told me I was always going to wear hand me downs because my mother had no money to buy me new clothes, I read the book and I cried because when the crow dropped the pebbles into the pitcher to drink the water...
2 tags
Holden on failure
“I’ve never been one to handle criticism well. But at the same time, I sometimes see kids who fall and stay fallen and cry until their parents pick them up, and I sometimes see kids who fall and get back up laughing even before their parents could catch up with them. I’m the kid who falls and stays fallen and I get angry because I’ve always been good at walking the concrete...
2 tags
Holden on time
“When we first welcomed our pet bird home, it was a little strange because we weren’t very certain what he was going to be like 10 years later. He’s still very much alive, but we still wonder how long more he has to go. But when we think about the 10 years he’s been with us, we kind of start to feel that even if he should pass on tomorrow, he’ll always remain as...
August 2010
10 posts
2 tags
Holden on going to hell
“It’s not real right? Why is it that even after we’ve been tormented alive, we have to go through a whole new set of eternal torture? I wonder why some people who’ve had a hard life have to end up having a hard death. No, I don’t think hell exists after you die. Maybe they’ll tell you stories about it when you’re alive so you’ll be a good (but very...
Holden on better words
“It is what it is. It’s like when God, during the seven days he created the world, was asked to perhaps make the water more blue and the trees with a tinge of yellow so that they look greener in their reflection.”
2 tags
Holden on instruction manuals
“I don’t read them. Even when I absolutely have to, like when I realise I can never seem to do something right, I’ll submit to it like politicians to faults. Nonetheless, they’re quite redundant. No, not the politicians, we still kind of need them like we still kind of need watchmen to watch over empty buildings (they could get stolen). What I’m saying is, it’s...
2 tags
Holden on patriotism
“I saw a national parade tonight. It was spectacular, with its vibrant colours and orderly presentation of events which seemed to unfold as a story. It reminded me of how we are so well-governed in that same orderly manner in the guise of an artificial vibrancy.
We’re living this story that our “father” wrote, which he dictates for us every second of our life on this...
2 tags
Holden on practicality
“Yesterday, I was looking at furniture in a boutique. They were expensive but those exorbitant prices were no rival for their glamour. Every piece was embroidered in enough gold to make an owner feel like a wealthy man and the fabric that covered their exterior were made of the finest silk. I picked a few, emptied my life’s savings and made some arrangements to get them delivered to...
2 tags
Holden on honesty
“It’s like when I’m feeding cats and all I want to do is keep them from hunger because I believe every living being deserves to live a good life, instead of harbouring thoughts of bringing it home to keep it under my care although I can never guarantee my undivided attention nor give it its rightfully deserved freedom. Or when I was younger and I always said what I was really...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
2 tags
Holden on hatred
“I see a highlight on the news about a woman being scarred for life after trying to pursue a joyful future not for herself, but for her ailing mother, and it becomes deemed by some readers as unworthy of news. Maybe they’d rather read about a renowned technological company’s pursuit of dignity-maintenance after making a mistake. I read about one religion encouraging the stoning...
A leap of faith
If you’re a follower and have liked the posts here, please consider recommending this Tumblr (every Tuesday) here. If you’ve only just popped by, know that all that you will find here is someone’s honesty. So please consider recommending. As an update outside of my usual posts, I’d like to announce that I’ve started a series titled ‘Hold’. If you’ve been...
July 2010
2 posts
2 tags
Holden on being in love
“Am I in love? No no, I wouldn’t say that. It’s a very difficult question, yes, but only because I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is it like to be in love? All I’ve known till this day is that I have enjoyed and am enjoying the company of someone who cares about me as much as I care about them, maybe more. I indulge in our sweet embraces and endless...
2 tags
Holden on sanity
“I’m trying to lose some sleep tonight, and then tomorrow night and the night after, in hopes that sanity will slip away from me or I can somehow find a route that will allow me to escape from its tight-gripping clutches. Why? Well obviously you haven’t seen these bruises around my neck and arms, and on virtually every part of my body. I wouldn’t mind so much if they hurt...
2 tags
Introducing Holden
There was a rug (where there was a couch) embroidered with gold at his feet, which were covered in mud from the recent adventure he had in his backyard, while he counted sheeps in his head hoping he would fall asleep in a sitting position (so that the blood is supposed to flow downwards to his feet and turn them red but full of energy) and wake up with sleep marks on his face to remind him his...
June 2010
2 posts
4 tags
There is something about today
If my bones should break in an ordered manner, let at least my arms embrace this quaint beauty. In case my will should quaver in its duty, break them for me as if a simple matter. Lest I might drown in a mind I cannot make, drown me first in this fragile, untiring love. Today, like yesterday, is never rid of tomorrow and its uncertain “give or take?”; but like the creatures that we...